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Venezuela Doctors Worried About Official Silence on Zika

January 27, 2016 10:26 AM

Associated Press

A public health technician shows the cultivated eggs of Aedes aegyti mosquitoes in a research area to help prevent the spread of Zika virus and other mosquito-borne diseases, at the entomology department of the Minister of Public Health, in Guatemala City, Jan. 26, 2016.

Venezuela's medical community is demanding the government publish statistics about the Zika virus and warning it could already be alarmingly widespread.

Venezuela's Ministry of Health has so far limited itself to confirming the presence of the mosquito-borne illness in the South American country. The ministry stopped publishing data on all epidemic diseases a year ago.

Former Health Minister Jose Felix Oletta says it is unacceptable that the government wait so long to release Zika statistics and begin working to contain the virus.